


Endpapers

by Shenanigans



Category: DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Hood/Arsenal (Comics)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, I think I can call this fluff, M/M, Multi, implied Joyfire, no beta we die like robins, obsessive use of music and poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 04:00:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26346751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shenanigans/pseuds/Shenanigans
Summary: Jason loves poetry and Roy loves him.
Relationships: Roy Harper/Jason Todd
Comments: 22
Kudos: 109





	Endpapers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [poisonivory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisonivory/gifts).



> All poetry quoted is by the incomparably stunning and necessary poet Richard Siken from his collection "Crush".
> 
> Songs are Romeo and Juliet by the Dire Straights and Such a Simple Thing by Ray LaMontagne.
> 
> The stuff in the middle is mine.

Jason's mouth moves when he reads poetry like he is tasting the vowels tucked between consonants. Roy watches as he sharpens the edges of the arrowheads, the soft velvety sound of metal grinding against the whetstone shifting to match the rhythm of Jason's breaths. He can almost hear the beat of it, the way Jason's voice would sound like the tripping trickle of a stream over round river rocks. 

"I don't mind if you read out loud, you know," Roy says.

"Huh?" Jason's mouth makes the question before he pulls his eyes up, tearing himself out of the winding words to blink at Roy. It's like he's waking up and Roy lets himself enjoy it. He would watch Jason wake up as often as he's allowed. 

"You can just read it." Roy shrugs, tilting a grin at him before continuing to sharpen the arrowheads.

" _Um_."

"I like listening to you."

Jason shutters up after a startled open second that Roy misses because he's touching the point to the pad of his thumb. It's one of those rare moments when Jason looks his age; where Jason looks hopeful. When Roy looks up again, he's collected and has the book closed around his thumb and his mouth closed around the words.

Roy itches his nose against his shoulder and plucks the next dulled tip from the pile. "You know, if you want. No pressure."

The kitchen is small and full of light, the windows milky with the aged dirt that collects in the warehouse district down by the piers. It's salt and silt and dust. It's golden and warm on a rare Gotham day where the sun has shouldered through the crowded clouds and spired skyscrapers. Jason's brown skin glows, hair a reddish halo where he's back lit. Roy knows his scars, could count them by rote because someone has to. He's wearing a pair of loose overly long basketball shorts and a Gotham Knights jersey that's open over his shoulders and along his sides. Roy can see him breathe.

The book rustles and Jason starts to read: "The stranger says there are no more couches and he will have to sleep in your bed. You try to warn him, you tell him you will want to get inside him, and ruin him, but he doesn't listen."

Roy forces himself not to look up. He can't startle Jason. He can't do anything but feel his heartbeat trip as he keeps sharpening something meant for pain. He wonders if Jason feels like an arrowhead ground against stone, polished into something beautiful and patient, into something dangerous and quivering.

"You do this, you do. You take the things you love and tear them apart or you pin them down with your body and pretend they're yours."

When Jason reads, Roy gets why poetry needs to exist. It's music in his mouth, the deep rumbling baritone that's breathy and light like he's embarrassed. Roy tries not to let himself imagine pinning Jason down and pretending he's his.

Jason wets his lips and Roy can hear the soft wet sound of it and the shift of his skin on the pages and he's not jealous, he just _wants_. "So, you kiss him, and he doesn't move, he doesn't pull away, and you keep on kissing him. And he hasn't moved, he's frozen, and you've kissed him, and he'll never forgive you, and maybe now he'll leave you alone."

Roy watches Jason glare at the page under his fingers. He watches the way his mouth moves into something like a sulky pout. He watches the way he stays very still, the blush skipping across his skin in the warm golden light in this kitchen. He wants to say something, but he's trying not to scare away this fragile bit of Jason that he's asked for, he doesn't want to watch him snatch it back and tuck it into his pocket like he's holstering a gun (and not something warm and fragile and stunning).

"That's a hell of a thing," he manages after a moment and wonders if Jason can hear how he's breathless or if he's hidden it well.

Jason looks up at him and Roy doesn't know what to do with the muddy hazel of those eyes- sometimes blue, sometimes green, sometimes gray. (Never his.) "Trying to catch up on what I missed."

"Not complaining, Jaybird." Roy smiles at him and Jason looks away quickly. "Got any more?"

Jason looks back at him before looking down and clears his throat. "Yeah."

**

Roy is singing under his breath, just a catchy little twiddle of melody that stumbles around in his lungs and got stuck in his bones when he was younger. It's a little twiddle that reminds him of those moments when Dinah would flush and duck her head when Ollie cupped against her back and brushed whiskered kisses to the pale line of her neck. It reminds him of those moments when he believed love was real.

He's startled by a happy sound of clapping and looks over to see Kory beaming at him where she's draped over the back of the couch, long arms toned and tipped with graceful fingers that could leave long red lines in his skin or burn him to cinders. She’s visiting. She’s not his. She’s not anyone’s but her own. 

“I do not know this song,” she tells him, watching him across the short open space between the couch and the open kitchen. He’s in jeans, a fraying old band t-shirt, tattoos, and his constant chipper hope that he can remember these moments when they’re gone. She’d braided his hair that morning into the two long red braids that hung heavy down his back. He didn’t linger in what that could have meant- she’s not his and they share moments in between moments. (He doesn’t watch her sleep.)

“Dire Straights, Princess. Oldie, but a goodie.” He grins at her and bites his lip. It's easy to slip into performing and he stands, the chair at the kitchen table skidding back with a juddering noise. He clears his throat and picks up the melody like he’s snagging a flower from the neighbors’ garden for her.

"A lovestruck Romeo sang the streets of serenade. Laying everybody low with a love song that he made." He clutches a hand to his chest and lets his throat open, the long heavy slip of his braids slipping over his shoulder to swing over his chest. He's confident here. He knows he's got a lovely rasping tenor that he can use just as deftly as any other tool. "Finds a streetlight, steps out of the shade, he says something like-"

Kori's eyes light up and her hair shimmers, the constant impossibly beautiful heatwave like she's the endless stretch of red desert, of home. She's a mirage of everything he's ever wanted and he curls his shoulders forward and emotes into the notes. Her mouth is warm and soft and he knows what it tastes like. 

The safe-house flickers with her light, the shadows stretching and leaping like cats before settling around where Jason is standing in the hallway, watching them. Roy touches the curve of Kory's jaw and glances up at Jason. Jason finds a bit of shadow and pulls it around him, still like he's hiding. Roy is ridiculous.

He grins, settling into the sex of it, the need of it, and husks the next bar to him. "You and me, babe, how about it?"

Jason looks like he's going to run, his entire body tensing and Roy sighs into the bridge. He closes his eyes and clambers over the back of the couch and into Kory's arms, the way her knees open for his hips and sits back on his heels, hands falling to the tops of her thighs. He flips a braid back, and she's smiling up at him. She's smiling up at him and Jason is in the shadows. 

Roy is performing and it's almost real. "Juliet says, 'Hey, it's Romeo, you nearly gave me a heart attack.' He's underneath the window, she's singing, 'Hey, la, my boyfriend's back. You shouldn't come around here singing up at people like that. Anyway, what you gonna do about it?"

He ducks and catches her mouth, grins slippery around the welling heat she exhales into it, melting under him and a small flare singes the couch- the smell like an iron left on too long. He pushes and watches her, her heart shaped face made for being loved, the shape of her curves, the weight of her breasts tipped under the shirt she'd stolen from him and the glossy weight of her thigh under his palm. 

"'Juliet, the dice was loaded from the start.” He sings it against her smile. “And I bet, and you exploded into my heart. And I forget, I forget the movie song. When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong, Juliet?'" He shifts his hands under her and she arches against him, pliant and willing.

Roy is strong and lifting her is a flex of shoulders and arms like the rough tug necessary to draw his bow. He heaves her around his hips and works to his feet to dance them in a laughing stumble, her mouth against his temple, his jaw, his neck. He catches Jason's eyes, winking at the frown that clambers onto the other man's face and continues. "Come up on different streets, they both were streets of shame. Both dirty, both mean, yes, and the dream was just the same. And I dreamed your dream for you and now your dream is real." He carries Kory to the hall, holding her against him and holding out a hand to Jason. "How can you look at me as if I was just another one of your deals?"

Jason's frown goes hard and Roy sighs.

"Can't stop now, Jaybird," he stage-whispers. Jason looks up at the ceiling and Roy knows he's going to give in, going to relent. He tries not to think about what that means. (Jason is uncompromising.)

Jason takes his hand and Roy's whole world lights up. It's the same feeling of watching Dinah let herself be loved, it's the same feeling of watching Ollie leave hot scorching looks on the ground between them when Dinah's not paying attention. It's avoidance and it's like the promise of a happy ending on a book he's only half way through. 

Jason Todd is beautiful in a completely different way from Kory. “When you can fall for chains of silver you can fall for chains of gold. You can fall for pretty strangers and the promises they hold. You promised me everything, you promised me thick and thin, yeah. Now you just say ‘oh, Romeo, yeah, you know I used to have a scene with him’.”

Kory is sunshine and laughter lines and the welling budding green of sex and sloppy slow kisses. She's the ache of being ridden and the shift of muscle under his palms. She’s stunning, tall and lush with round curves. Her red hair crackles with heat, eyes a wide and shimmering green. Jason is darker like a silhouette in a window Roy shouldn't be watching, a smile behind a hand and loose change spilling between strangers working without question to help each other gather it off the cement. He’s broad shoulders and narrow hips, angles like shattered glass with the sweet promise of something that will leave its mark. Jason is startling and unexpected, he's the kind of beauty that means something else had to be destroyed. Kory is beautiful in the way that does the destroying.

“‘Juliet, when we made love, you used to cry. You said 'I love you like the stars above, I'll love you till I die'. There's a place for us, you know the movie song. When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong, Juliet?" Kory is burning and Jason is drowning. “I can't do the talk like they talk on the TV. And I can't do a love song like the way it's meant to be. I can't do everything but I'd do anything for you. I can't do anything except be in love with you.” 

Roy knows he would live to die like this: Jason's hand in his and an embarrassed look on his face with Kory's thighs holding her around his hips and music in the air.

**

Roy is staring at his palms. His fingers are shaking and he's confused, the stunned sort of foggy that comes from a head wound. The water is running in the sink and the night is smeared against the dirty windows in the kitchen. It's a long wall of industrial panes caught in neat tidy squares between the ironwork. The whole thing is set into a cinder block wall with no space between the heat of the cement and the paint, just the rough edges covered in a loamy eggshell white. There's no curtains, but the night is just sitting and watching him while he rinses his hands in the water, the soap small pink bubbles.

Jason is panting on the counter beside him. It's another scar and Roy adds it to the tally. "I should have seen him," he tells the blood he's scraping from under his fingernails.

Jason's thighs are caught in the holsters, the weaponry he carries to remind the world that he's violent. He needs to remind the world that he's dangerous and hide his face because Roy knows he's soft. (His hair is tangled soft curls and his mouth is soft and dimples under Roy's thumb and his heart bruises like pears left in a wooden bowl.) Jason's shirt is a cut tangle of blood on the counter, his armor cracked open and left in bits like carefully exhumed dragon scales. Jason is taping the wound and Roy is scrubbing his blood off his fingers, his hands, his wrists, his-

"Hey," Jason says into the sound of the water running. "I read one you might like this morning."

Roy can't look up. He's wearing his hat. He's wearing a ponytail. He's wearing Jason's blood. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." Jason shifts and he's pulling out his phone, the facial recognition flipping it from the lock screen to his tidy set of folders. Jason wipes his hands on his side to clean a finger to open his pictures and then he exhales. Roy wants the water to fix it all. "Hey, look at me."

Roy knows that if he looks he won't be able to look away and sometimes Jason squirms under his stare. Sometimes, Jason opens his mouth enough that Roy can see the line of his teeth. He won't be able to look away from the hooded perfect of Jason's angry eyes, the lilting tilt of his brows, and the warm glow of his skin. There's no moonlight tonight, caught up behind the clouds, but Gotham is never dark but it's never light either. It's gray space and Jason is looking at him. He can see the ridges of his scars in stark relief from the light of his phone. His eyelashes are so long they leave shadows on his skin.

Roy smiles, crooked and automatic. "You're very pretty, Jaybird," Roy tries to tease. It comes out like the truth. (It is.)

Jason wrinkles his nose and Roy wants to kiss him. "Shut up, Harper." He sniffs and his gaze flicks up to Roy and then away just as quickly down to the picture on his phone. Roy wants to set his fingers on the slow bob of his adam's apple when he swallows. He can tell him he's just taking his pulse. He could-

"We are the crossroads, my little outlaw, and this is the landscape of my heart after cruelty, which is of course a garden," Jason's voice rasps against Roy's skin like a cat's tongue, lighting him up and roughly sweet. "Which is tenderness."

Roy is moving, hands leaving wet prints on Jason's pants over the cutting straps of his holsters and Jason is shaking. Jason is shaking and focused angrily on the picture on his phone while Roy moves helplessly close. "Jay."

"Which is a room, which is a lover saying 'hold me tight, it's getting cold. We have not touched the stars," he continues, resolute. Jason is determined, brawling forward into the poem.

"Jason."

"We have not touched the stars," Jason repeats. Roy realizes he'd lost his place and his breath catches in his throat and he wants to place a hand over the phone but he wants to keep watching Jason's mouth soft around words that mean so much to him. "Nor are we forgiven. Which brings us back to the hero's shoulders-"

"Stop me if I'm reading this wrong," Roy manages even as he's already reaching up to cup a wet palm against the blade-sharp rigid line of Jason's jaw.

"And a gentleness," Jason whispers, voice choking as his eyes flick up. Roy's seen this look on him before, the way he went glossy eyed and open mouthed. He'd thought he was bored.

"-and then the main catalyzer will have to attach to the, Jay?" He had waved a hand in front of Jason's face, sure that he'd lost the other man. Jason had blinked and shaken himself, looking back down at the machine open on the workbench under Roy's fingers. 

"Yeah, I'm listening, go on."

But now he is stunned, rabbit hearted and swallowed by the weight of realization. Roy might be a genius but he's always been slow about being loved. He loves the wrong people the right way and the right people at the wrong time and never this- never this guarded look of hope on someone who could break the world if he wanted to. Never _Roy_. Never.

"And a gentleness that comes," Jason repeats, speaking from memory like the phone had been a prop. He turns the words into kisses against the center of Roy's palm, eyes still turned to watch him. They're gray, no blue, no green, no- Jason's particular shade of indefinable. "Not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it."

"I'm going to kiss you." 

Jason's breath hitches. His mouth is plush and perfect, like an unmade Sunday bed. Roy can't pretend this kiss is a mistake, not when Jason drops his phone and it cracks against the cement floor of the safe-house. Not when Jason is whispering his name into his mouth like poetry. Not when he doesn't ever want it to stop. 

**

Jason is asleep and Roy is still surprised that he's allowed to have this. He was sure Jason would be gone in the morning. 

They don't talk about it. They don't talk about the way Jason will come up behind Roy in the workshop and bend to touch his mouth to the pale skin of his neck. They don't talk about the way Roy's pale skin flushes red at the touch, the way Roy goes hard at the sound of a page turning, the way Jason just slotted into Roy's heart like he'd buried a knife there instead of something that felt like a promise.

He's still surprised by the way Jason's brown skin looks warm and soft against the rumpled sheets of their bed. He likes that his freckled skin is what Jason's mouth waters for. He likes that Jason cards a finger into his loose hair like he's found Prometheus' fire. (It's just red, Roy wants to tell him, just red.) He's surprised at the way Jason sleeps with him like a little kid, mouth open and face soft, hair a ruckus of tight curls and deep perfect breaths puffing out of him and across the pillow. Jason Todd is a sprawl of heavy muscle, broad scarred back, and every bit of Roy's heart shoved into each moment he'll let Roy have.

Jason fills Roy's heart with music. He would be embarrassed by the cliche of it all, but he's too busy bending to whisper the song into a scar that curves over Jason's ribs toward his spine, a thick shiny reminder of why Jason can't be alone. Jason shouldn't be alone.

"Tell me what you're feelin'," Roy sings, nearly humming while mouthing the words and letting it vibrate against Jason's skin. He's can say it this way, he can say things that are real and true. "I can take the pain. Tell me that you mean it, that you won't leave again."

Jason blinks awake, shivers into a stretch, body going taut and turns toward Roy. He turns into the song that skips from his shoulder over his rib to dance over the hard plane of his chest. "Tell me what your heart wants-"

"Hey."

Roy looks up through his lashes because Jason in the morning is like taking a punch he can never prepare for. His mouth moves over the ridges of the Y shaped scar, finding the join at the heart of him. "Such a simple thing; my heart is like paper-"

Jason's fingers card into his hair, scooping it back from his face and tangling to tug with a soft groan. (He'll keep that sound with the rest he carries in his heart.) "'Mornin' to you too," he yawns, covering his mouth with the back of his hand, fingers curled loose and his pulse visible in the vein at his wrist before it shivers along the thick one that slides up his forearm and dips adroitly at his elbow. It reemerges over the thick knot of his bicep. Roy has traced it. He has followed the roadmap of Jason's pulse. He has tasted it on his tongue, hot and heavy with Jason's fingers in his hair just like this. (More, please god let me have this, Roy thinks.)

"Yours is like a flame," Roy sings, voice throbbing with something he wishes he could say aloud. He wishes he had the words for it, but it seems too small. He sings. Jason reads poetry against the back of his neck while he does the dishes and sticks broad hot palms into his pants. Roy shakes apart and wishes he had the right note, the right tone, the right melody to explain this to Jason. "I can't make you see if you don't by now-"

"God, I love your voice," Jason tells him, tugging him up and catching his mouth. Roy sinks against him, knee slipping between his thigh, the hair on his calf brushing and tangling with Jason's in a tickle against his skin. He can feel Jason going thick and interested against his hip.

"I'll get through these chains," Roy prays, urgent as the song changes tone, changes into something shared. "Some how, _some how_."


End file.
